Former President Donald Trump’s departure from the White House after a single term has triggered a heated debate over the direction of the Republican Party, with the governing class that never fully made peace with him frequently at odds with the MAGA-centric base.
Rep. Liz Cheney, a Wyoming Republican, beat back an attempt to oust her as chairwoman of the House Republican Conference for being one of 10 GOP members of the chamber to vote for Trump’s impeachment. It was a stunning turn of events that the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, a mainstay of the party, even found herself in this position. On Thursday, the House is set to vote on stripping Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of her committee assignments, mainly for her advocacy of Trump-era conspiracy theories.
Trump’s second Senate trial in as many years also looms, this time with lawmakers deliberating whether he incited an insurrection at the Capitol on Jan. 6 — and whether this process for removal from office constitutionally applies to a president whose term has already expired.
Rank-and-file Republicans are looking for direction, as the former president’s exit from Washington has left a Trump-sized party leadership void in his wake.
“Sometimes, these family fights are necessary, and we hope they’re short-term,” said Rep. Ted Budd, a North Carolina Republican. “I believe that the Republican Party has an agenda that works, but we can’t go back to the old-style GOP that only catered to elites. President Trump brought so many new working-class voters into our party, and we need to go forward with that in mind.”
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, has gently tried to nudge the party in a post-Trump direction. He took strong exception to Trump’s claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen and said that the riot at the Capitol was fed by the then-president’s “lies.” McConnell castigated Greene as a “cancer” on the party and publicly defended Cheney. But he voted with 44 other Republican senators in favor of a point of order finding Trump’s post-presidential Senate trial unconstitutional.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, by contrast, met with the former president in Florida, posing for a photo with Trump and saying he would be involved in helping Republicans in the midterm elections. The California Republican urged his colleagues to stick with Cheney but handled Greene more gingerly.
“I understand that Marjorie’s comments have caused deep wounds to many and as a result, I offered Majority Leader [Steny] Hoyer a path to lower the temperature and address these concerns,” McCarthy said in a statement on Wednesday. Hoyer was unmoved by the gesture and has now set in motion a House vote on Greene’s committee assignments, which would force Republicans to take a stand.
These disputes spilled over into a lengthy House Republican Conference meeting that symbolized the larger intraparty fight. Cheney refused to back down from or apologize for her impeachment vote. Greene apologized for her past advocacy of QAnon, a set of conspiracy theories that portray Trump as the lone fighter against a child-molesting political establishment, and reaffirmed that she believed school shootings are “real and awful.” She had previously described some high-profile shootings as “false flag” events designed to bolster support for gun control.
“As for Rep. Cheney, I think she has the right to vote her conscience, but to go against President Trump as chair of our conference is concerning and worthy of a discussion,” Budd said. “As for Rep. Greene, while I don’t like any of the comments she made two years prior to being elected, I don’t want to be in the business of telling the people of Georgia who they can elect.”
“We need to cut bait,” a Republican congressional aide said of Greene. “But a lot of members see this as more media-driven, while what a member of leadership does actually matters.”
In the end, Cheney prevailed on Wednesday night, with 145 voting to retain her as conference chairwoman and 61 voting by secret ballot to remove her.
The GOP was seen as leaderless for much of former President Barack Obama’s tenure after President George W. Bush left office with low approval ratings, but that didn’t stop it from winning the House in 2010, the Senate in 2014, and the White House in 2016. Republicans would need to gain only one Senate seat to recapture the majority in the midterm elections and fewer than 10 House seats.
What is unusual is that Trump still casts such a long shadow over the party. He may run again in 2024 if he is not convicted by the Senate and then subsequently banned from doing so. He could remain a Republican kingmaker. And his family could attempt to start a Trump political dynasty with its own campaigns.
“Moving forward, Republicans are going to keep struggling with whether they want him involved with the party or not,” said Rory Cooper, a former senior aide to Eric Cantor as House majority leader. “Jan. 6 provided a clean break, and yet, we’ve seen some march back into his embrace for fear of caucus or voter dynamics. I don’t expect we’ll get that clean break in the trial either. But it may give more members permission to separate themselves from him while still embracing a lot of Trumpism.”
“Regarding other family members running for office, I’m not sure the brand is enough to support any of them. None of them have deep or recent roots in any of the states they’re mentioning, and none of them are named Donald Trump Sr.,” said a veteran Republican strategist. “As a Republican operative, I’d love to litigate Trump in a Republican primary when it’s not actually him running.”
The Cheney vote will not be the last GOP referendum on Trump.
“This is a bleak time for Republicans without a clear direction out,” Cooper said. “They’re stuck in the mess they helped create. Rather than following the most sycophantic of senators down the procedural rabbit hole trying to protect Trump, they should simply be fair jurors with an eye toward holding people accountable for one of the darkest days in our nation’s democratic history.”
